“No wonder that Main Mother Body accepted the Torch Church believers,” Chu Guang murmured after a long pause.

Those people had once visited Shelter 401, and had taken with them the Spirit Interference Device and its blueprints.

In other words, they possessed the very tool needed to speak with the Main Mother Body in Clearspring City.

Their ideology and convictions happened to align perfectly with the Gaia Faction sympathized with by the Mutant Slime Mold, though they were just a little more extreme toward their own kind.

But what did that matter?

To put it bluntly, the Main Mother Body probably regarded them the same way Chu Guang looked at Little Feather.

After fighting for so many years, to finally meet a group of humans who could understand Its will, who knew, maybe all the DNA samples held by the Torch Church had been gifted to them by the Main Mother Body of Clearspring City itself.

“Are there any other memories?” Hyrja asked eagerly when the playback ended, her eyes full of yearning as she looked toward where Little Seven’s voice came from.

“That’s all. That’s everything it knew,” Little Seven replied helplessly.

Hyrja’s expression dimmed a little at the answer, disappointment flashing briefly across her face, but she didn’t press further.

“Incredible... this completely overturns everything I thought I knew about Mutant Slime Mold.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then looked at Chu Guang with bright, excited eyes. “You know what? I just got a flood of new ideas... no, I can’t even explain them to you. I need to lock myself in the lab for a few days.”

Seeing her practically itching to start experimenting, Chu Guang figured she had to have gained some inspiration relevant to her field from those memories.

That kind of specialized topic was far beyond his area of expertise.

Without asking for details, he cleared his throat and said, “Lock yourself away as long as you need, but before that, I need your opinion on something.”

He had successfully caught her curiosity.

“What is it?”

Chu Guang tried to explain his idea. “I want Little Feather to... improve the cityscape of Clearspring City.”

It wasn’t exactly a plan, more of a wild thought.

He had been lurking on the forums earlier and noticed Professor Yang urging Falling Feather to put his millions of newly adopted offspring on the production line to farm credits.

Honestly, that was one play Chu Guang hadn’t seen coming. Even Falling Feather himself thought the suggestion was too absurd to be realistic.

If that were really possible, it wouldn’t just ruin other players’ experience, it might even wreck the NPCs’ lives.

That sort of mod was better kept under collective control.

“Improve the cityscape?” Hyrja blinked, confused. “How exactly do you improve that?”

Chu Guang patiently elaborated. “Right now, Clearspring City is still a wasteland. But if millions of sub-entities could participate in reconstruction, projects that would normally take a century might be finished within a few years.”

He wasn’t asking for much, just to restore a few urban districts to a livable level. That alone would be a huge win for the New Alliance.

And letting Little Feather contribute visibly to society could also help ease people’s fears and prejudice toward it.

When Hyrja stayed silent for a while, he added softly, “Of course, it’s just a rough idea for now...”

“Hmm... it’s not about being rough or not. The idea sounds great, but there’s a catch.” After a pause, Hyrja spoke again, her expression thoughtful. “According to our research, hive minds aren’t as omnipotent as they seem. Their control mostly operates on the macro level. Take Thea for example, her fine control was stronger than the Main Mother Body. But even for her, once the number of sub-bodies exceeded a thousand or ten thousand, she couldn’t micromanage each one individually.”

“That’s why she adopted a semi-autonomous model, allowing assimilated spawn to retain part of their self-awareness, so they could interpret vague commands and fill in details themselves. Most researchers believe that’s a behavioral adaptation the Mutant Slime Mold learned from human society.”

She went on.

“As for Little Feather, its control over the sub-bodies in Clearspring City is actually weaker than that of the Main Mother Body it devoured. It transmits orders through sound rather than spores. While sound travels faster and farther, its information entropy is lower. After passing through both vocal and spore mediums, it’s hard to say if the sub-bodies even understand complex commands.”

“In short, if Little Feather tells them to bite someone, they’ll get it. But if it asks them to move an object from one place to another, well, that’ll test its leadership skills.”

Chu Guang sighed, slightly disappointed. “I see...”

Seeing his expression, Hyrja quickly added, “That’s just my hypothesis, it might not be correct. Honestly, you shouldn’t even be asking me about this. You should talk to Little Feather directly. That little one is a born biologist. Its very existence is a miracle, something outside the boundaries of our understanding.” Then she smirked playfully. “To paint a picture for you, we scientists are like magicians, we need fine-crafted wands and complicated incantations to perform our tricks.”

“But Little Feather?”

“It is the magic.”

...

Level B6.

Standing amid a sea of faint red, Little Feather let out a quiet sigh.

The spore-veil rippled like waves, spreading outward in circles until it blended seamlessly into the black server racks standing like reefs in the room.

It seemed even Mutant Slime Mold had their own troubles.

Taking off his VR headset, Chu Guang, sitting at the server room entrance, set the goggles down on the head of the trash bin shaped robot beside him.

Noticing its melancholy, he didn’t start his own topic right away but instead asked gently, “What are you thinking about?”

A calm thread of thought flowed through red tendrils into the carbon-based semiconductors inside the server core. Little Seven parsed it and translated it into human speech. “I couldn’t convince Thea.”

It could speak, technically, but human language carried too little data, and it preferred its own way of expression. Little Seven was there to interpret anyway.

Chu Guang thought for a moment, then said softly, “You don’t need to be sad for her. She chose her own fate, to follow her mother’s path to the end. Nothing in this world is perfect, and you’ve done more than enough.”

“Yiwu.” Little Feather murmured quietly, seeming to cheer up a little.

Ever since waking up, Chu Guang had been the first human it met, and to it, he was like a father and mother rolled into one. His words carried great weight.

At first, it hadn’t understood that feeling, but after meeting Thea and the Main Mother Body, it began to grasp what inheritance meant.

Just as Thea had carried her mother’s will, Little Feather had inherited his guidance.

Its worldview had been shaped within New Alliance society. Aside from its form, its sense of self was nearly identical to that of a human. After all, shape meant little to a being with countless sub-bodies but only one consciousness.

It was, in that sense, the opposite of humanity, who loved to divide themselves based on appearances.

After a moment’s silence, Little Feather suddenly asked a strange question. “Am I human?”

Chu Guang pondered and answered truthfully. “Objectively speaking, no.”

Hearing that, Little Feather sounded slightly dejected, but soon brightened again and asked, “How can I become human?”

Sensing the seriousness and innocence behind that question, Chu Guang couldn’t help smiling. His voice softened. “You don’t need to become human. You are you. You should know that we’ve never treated you as an outsider.”

“Yiwuu!” Seemingly delighted by the answer, Little Feather’s tone lifted with joy. It eagerly extended a tendril from the red sea, reaching for Chu Guang’s shoulder to nuzzle his cheek.

It was one of its friendly gestures, something it had learned from a creature named Neeko.

Perched on Chu Guang’s shoulder, Little Seven scooted away in disgust, protesting, “Ew! Don’t smear that goo on me! My circuits will rust!”

The figurine Pai had given Chu Guang was still Little Seven’s favorite body among all its avatars. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Recently, Eberts had gifted him another, a life-sized one it also liked, but since that one, like Frost and Eclipse, had its own AI core, Little Seven found it awkward to use.

“Yiwuuu.” Little Feather gave a little hurt cry and slithered around to Chu Guang’s other shoulder.

The two got along well, really.

Most of the time, Little Seven acted as Chu Guang’s translator, and whenever Falling Feather logged off, Little Seven was the one keeping Little Feather company.

Watching Little Seven hop onto the trash bin, Chu Guang laughed. He didn’t mind Little Feather’s affectionate gesture. His exoframe could clean itself anyway.

When it came to new things, Chu Guang had always been open-minded.

After all, if humanity’s old methods still worked, he wouldn’t be the one cleaning up their mess now.

And looked at another way, if his wild idea actually worked, Little Feather would basically be a planetary-scale terraforming device!

If they ever found a planet hovering just below the habitability line, too much carbon dioxide or toxic gases, he could just airdrop Little Feather in first to take a crack at it.

Interstellar communication couldn’t possibly be harder than interstellar travel.

Unlike its ancestor Gaia, Little Feather didn’t even need spores to communicate. All it needed was a microphone, with human technology to back it up.

From a cost perspective, it would be way cheaper than conventional atmospheric engineering.

And its reach could grow alongside the New Alliance’s fleets and colonial ambitions, venturing into worlds its ancestor never imagined.

A true win-win.

Of course, exploring new worlds was still far off. The old one still had plenty of problems waiting for him to solve.

Smiling at the cheerful Little Feather, Chu Guang finally voiced his idea. “I would like to ask a favor.”

“Yiwuu!” Little Feather eagerly lifted a tendril, agreeing before even hearing what it was.

Chu Guang chuckled. “Aren’t you even going to ask what it is?”

The red spore-veil rippled softly, as transparent and sincere as a clear lake. “I trust you!” (Yiwu!)